Year in Review

One year ago today, I stopped off on my way home from a birthday celebration to join a gym. Stating very matter-of-factly that I ate horribly for 26 years, I can give being healthy a try to have a happy and long life! I committed myself to lose weight for my fiancée, my wedding, my health, my life, my closet, my future, myself.


Like everything in life, actions have a catalyst. With me, losing weight started with two pictures. The first was the engagement photos I took with my fiancée. “Who is this fat guy in the photos?” I asked. It couldn’t be me. But, of course it was. I was motivated, but it wasn’t until I saw a photo with less than a year to go until the wedding and I realized that it was getting worse (or wider) instead of better.

Now over the past year I haven’t been 100% on top of this weight loss thing. Unfortunately, my weight has had a tendency to fluctuate up and down drastically (I am talking 5 pound swings in a day). Over the past year, I was able to lose over fifty pounds, reaching an all time low of 178 pounds and being able to pull off a medium consistently.

With stress and business from the wedding and getting back in the swing of things with work and new home life (the wedding was a smashing success fyi), I have put back on quite a bit of the weight. I blame not going to the gym consistently for the last four months as the primary reason. I currently weigh in at between 192 and 197 pounds depending on if it is morning or after dinner (like I said 5 pound shifts [crazy, right?]). For the first time in my life, I have been consistently less than 200 pounds for a significant number of months. I plan to keep it this way.

I am ready to re-commit to going to the gym and losing weight. My ultimate goal is 170 pounds and to keep myself there this time.

After this weekend and my birthday, I am swearing off my new found favorite vice:

DOUGHNUTS. Gourmet Doughnuts!

I am also going to limit drinking to one night a week. No more after work beer nor Monday bottle of wine with the wife (don’t think she will be too happy at first, but will love the results).

Hopefully these two things as well as going back to what works for the diet will help jump start everything and knock this weight back off fast!

Thanks for reading and I will be sure to post more from the progress!

Have a great weekend!

We're Moving . . .

Hi all, I am moving the site to wordpress. This should be up by this weekend. The new address will be:
gradybeard.wordpress.com

 I look forward to all of your comments and follow on this site.

Best,

Gradybeard

Happy March

I haven't posted in a while and I wanted to say that I haven't really lost any weight, but I am still keeping my weight the same. Hoping to get back on track and posting more soon.

End of the month goal

February 29, 2012- 11:05 PM- Squeaked to my February goal of 185.0 LBS

 This means that my current BMI is 29.0!

Feels good to move a full digit away from Obese.

Week 19 Results

It doesn't feel like I have been at this for 19 Weeks, but it has been a struggle to get this weight off.

After taking a week off from blogging, I am finally below where I was before my travels and diet cheating ways . .  188.4.

Let's hope this weight continues to come off and for the 1st time in 4 months, I have NOT hit my monthly target. To be honest, its extremely disappointing, but I have lost over 40 pounds from where I was almost a year ago and well over 30 from when I started this crazy diet experiment.

Thank you for keeping up with me and keeping me honest. To another 19 weeks and hopefully 30 pounds!

Have a great couple days! Let's hope George Clooney walks away with Oscar Gold tonight.

Week 17 Results

The past few weeks, I traveled quite a bit. To Philly and then to New York over the last few weeks, led me to skip the gym much more than I should. Not good stuff at all.

My weigh in was 192.4. This is a gain of over 3 LBS. I am going to double down on my efforts as you can see here.

I really need to step it up so that I can hit my new goals.

Thanks for reading.

Not Good Enough . . .

Ever since I dropped below 200 LBS, my weight hasn't dropped as quickly or as easily. I am completely to blame for this, which is not a fun thought at all.

I haven't gone to the gym as much (usually 3 times a week in stead of the typical 5) and I have eased on the diet much more than I should have.

To motivate me more, I have decided to do take the following steps:

1. My new goal is 165 LBS. This is ten pounds more than my original goal (175 LBS)
1. By March 31st, my goal is 180 LBS
2. By April 30th, my goal is 175 LBS
3. By May 31st, my goal is 170 LBS
4. By June 30th, my goal is 165 LBS
2. Until I reach 175 LBS, I am going to abstain from going to Starbucks. 
1. While I typically will get regular coffee, I have ordered lattes with more frequency than I would like to admit. 
2. I am not saying that I won't run to McDonalds for an occasional coffee at lunch, but no more Starbucks.
3. No alcohol until I reach 175 LBS. I have gone out with friends a number of times and alcohol is usually involved. Alcohol and mixers are extra calories that I really should not be consuming.
4. I am going to run/walk in at least TWO 5 Ks before the wedding. This will help me train more and keep me motivated.
5. I am going to try to blog at least twice a week to keep me honest and on track for the diet.

Not looking forward to tomorrow's weigh in. Wish me luck!

Week 16 Results

Happy Sunday Everyone! As Americans, myself included, get ready to watch the showdown between the Patriots and the Giants to claim the title of 2011 - 2012 Super Bowl Champion (which could have a 1950's monster movie- George Washington leading the fray against a group of giants- pretty cool), I am happy to announce my best weight results so far!
For the first time in my adult life I weigh 189.2 LBS. This sets me at just over 14 LBS from my goal of 175 LBS. This weight also lowers my BMI to under 30, as mentioned in the post here.

This week set up some milestones:

• No longer obese
• You can test your BMI by checking on this NIH site
• Finally after weeks of trying, my weight has fallen under 190 LBS
• I have started to modify the diet to focus on calories taken in, rather than limiting carbs
• I have begun training for a 5K

More about all of these later on.

Have a great and safe Day!

BMI . . . again

I weighed in this morning at 189.2. This is the lightest I have weighed in probably over a decade. A DECADE and I am 26 years old.

I don’t know why I waited all this time to do something about my weight with diabetes running rampant in my family. But I can proudly say that I am no longer OBESE!! That evil and vile word.

There's an App for That

I have decided that I am going to change up my diet. After 12 + weeks on a low carb diet, I have decided to switch to a low-calorie diet to finish off the diet.

While the low-carb diet was difficult getting started, the low calorie one has been a tough transition as well. How do you know how many calories something has? How do I keep track of these things?

I turned to my cell phone for help!

I started using this application on my phone a few weeks ago called Lose it. This app allows you to track calories eaten and calories burned through exercise. We will see if this change in the diet works as well. Wish me luck!

Week 15 Results

With a stomach bug most of the week and traveling the second half of the week, I didn't get to the gym this week.

Today's result was 191.8 lbs.

This week I traveled for work and for first time in a long time and my suit fit well. More blogging and more going to the gym this week.

How I got started . . .

I wanted to take a post to go through what I have done so far . . .

I started gradually:
First I cut down big ticket carb items-
Sugar
Bread
Pasta
Rice
Oatmeal
Potatoes
Sweets (Muffins, Cookies, Candies, Scones)

Over time, I have added:
bananas
corn
beans

They have low-carb bread and tortillas, probably other things too. We buy these instead of normal bread.

I limit myself to two a day (which may seem like a lot, but it really isn't). The goal is to limit total carbs to under 70 grams a day.

After a week on the diet, I joined a gym.

I started slow, going 3 - 4 days a week and walking on the treadmill.

After about two weeks of this, I started increasing the incline of the treadmill. The sharper the incline, the more calories you lose.

Right now, I am slowly starting to eat normal, but I am watching my calorie intake. I am about 15 pounds from my goal. I will probably try and lose more weight, but its tough getting there.

This isn't a diet where you drop 10 pounds a week, but should be able to drop 2 - 5 pounds a week.

I hate getting sick

Without fail, I ALWAYS get sick in January. Every January, I get sick. It is crazy and is like clock work. I started off this week with what I originally thought was food poisoning, but think its more of a stomach bug. I won't get into the details too much, but I have had painful stomach cramps which did not let me get to the gym the first half of the week.

During the second half of the week, I have been out of town still feeling the stomach sickness that has plagued me all week. The last two weeks have knocked me off of track for the diet, which is horrible. I will try to post more on here to update what I have been doing with the diet and exercising.

Let's hope that I am able to keep the weight under 200 pounds and am feeling better so that I can hit the gym hard this weekend and next week.

week 14

I didn't get a chance to weigh myself this morning. We celebrated being engaged one year today.

I will post a Week 15 total. The great news is that I hit my lowest weight of 190.0 LBS this morning. . .

Week 13 - Results

This has been a great week for the diet! This week, my fiancee decided to join the gym and she jumped completely on board hitting the gym five days this week. I also hit the gym five times this week, with great results!

When I weighed in this morning, I hit a new weight of 192.6 LBS.

This means that I am under 20 LBS from goal and have lost 30 pounds since I have begun this diet and almost 40 pounds from my all-time-high of 230 LBS.

I have a number of comments on the blog that I will respond to soon, hopefully today or later this week.

A milestone . . .

I have been a big guy my entire life. Growing up overweight was tough, and it seems to be tough on all large people growing up. Maybe you just ate too much, or were depressed, or were picked on, or were bad at sports, or had a lousy dating life because of it . . . whatever the reason or the outcome, being fat sucks. I have been fat my entire life.

Today I have reached one milestone, I had once thought long impossible- while fully dressed, the scale read under 200 lbs. I am looking to the day where I will weigh 175 LBS and I may even change my goal, given the excellent success that I have had thus far and reach for an even lower end weight, but that will come in time.

If I keep up my routine and lose as much weight as I have been in the last several weeks, over the next two weeks, I will hit yet another milestone- having a BMI under 30. As you may recall from my post on body mass index, found here, the NIH and the World Health Organization use a simple calculation based on weight and height to determine if you are obese.
To see your BMI, you can use this handy NIH Calculator. Having a BMI under 30 means that I will no longer be considered obese.

On a side note, I really hate the word obese.

For more information about the World Health Organization's (WHO) definitions of obese and overweight, you can visit their website here.

Week 12 - Results

With my leg still sore this week, I took it easy at the gym. Rather than going full pace and risk hurting myself, I started to build back up my endurance on the treadmill.

I went to the gym five days this week, and while my workouts were not as intense or as long as they had been in the weeks leading up to the Christmas and New Years Holidays, I have great results.


At weigh in today, I was at 195.2. This is the best I have seen yet and a loss of over 3 pounds from last week.


My fiancee is looking to join the gym with me, though she has already lost enough weight through joining me as my support team on this diet.

Starting Back Up

Yesterday I went back to the gym for the first time in ten days after pulling a muscle in my leg. Not wanting to hurt my leg again, I took things very slowly, I spent 45 minutes at a slower than normal pace on the treadmill at hardly any incline, 25 minutes on the stationary bike and 15 minutes on the elliptical, before taking an extra mile walk outside. Overall, I burned about 500 calories, which is much lower than I have been used to burning.

Taking a full week and then some off of the gym taught me a few things.

• When taking time off of a diet and exercise routine, it is very difficult to get motivated again
• When exercising through an injury, it is important to watch for signs of pain
• Even one week off of the gym, kills your endurance and energy
• As my routine grew over the first 10 weeks, I was able to get more energy after exercising and I didn't feel tired and sore the next day
• After one day of starting back up, I am very tired and a little sore.
• I have to push through the next two weeks of exercise to build up this endurance

I have just under 24 LBS to lose to hit my goal. With 30 LBS gone, I have become complacent and unmotivated to push myself. Being around 200 LBS is an achievement for me, but it isn't good enough.

I am going to go to the gym as much as possible over the next two weeks. My hope is that my leg fully recovers over the next few weeks and that I continue to lose weight. Once my leg is at 100%, I will re-evaluate where I am and how I can best reach my goal by May 1st

Week 11 - Results

Happy 2012!

At the end of Week 10, I pulled a muscle in my calf. With the sore muscle, I decided not to go to the gym this week.

With the holiday festivities and not going to the gym, I gained a little weight this week. My weight is up to 198.8 LBS. This is a slight gain this week, but I am still under my December end goal of 200.0 LBS.